


Dead Heroes

by voicedimplosives



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 10:38:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14211357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voicedimplosives/pseuds/voicedimplosives
Summary: Pilots in love, or something close to it. Even now Poe isn't quite sure if they were trying to impress or terrify one another, although he wonders if it's possible that the truth is the two emotions, when it came to Paige and him, were not mutually exclusive.





	Dead Heroes

 

 

_There were a lot of heroes on that mission!_

 

_Dead heroes. No Leaders._

 

 _He can still remember:_ Paige Tico had always been a hard-nosed, unstoppable whirlwind of a woman — all bold statements and lofty ideals and then a lot more doing than speaking. Even after she'd joined the Cobalt Squadron, even after she'd been left with the same scars on her body and her soul that the rest of them sported from the vicious battles they hadn't won, she'd still believed in Heroes, with a capital 'H'. She'd believed in the ideas of Right and Wrong, and she worked hard to instill those beliefs in her little sister, Rose.

 

Poe is the one to tell Rose of her death, after he returns from their successful yet disastrous bombing of the _Fulminatrix_. It's only right, well — considering. Once General Organa has finished demoting him, he descends to the bowels of the _Raddus_ and finds Rose hammering away at some stubbornly misaligned valve, completely oblivious to the world around her.

 

“Rose,” he starts, and he doesn't get any further than that, because Rose looks up at him with those big dark eyes, so much like her sister's, and he breaks.

 

Just a little.

 

Just a ragged clearing of his throat, and perhaps some fleeting sign of what he's about to say passing across his features.

 

It's enough, because Rose's face crumples. She exhales shakily, and drops the thermal wrench, then crawls out from under the panel where the valve is exposed, a tangled web of wires swaying as she brushes past them.

 

“Is she...?” she asks, unable to complete the question, perhaps not even knowing what she's trying to ask. Her eyes go impossibly wider, and Poe — Poe, who has no brothers or sisters except his fellow pilots in the Black Squadron but who loves Paige in his own way — Poe thinks he understands what she's asking, and what she feels.

 

He nods, a infinitesimal gesture, and the young mechanic seems to deflate, sinking down to the grated durasteel walkway beneath their feet. Her hand clutches at the crescent moon-shaped Otomok medallion around her neck, and her breath begins catching, uneven and raw.

 

“Rose, I'm so—” he tries, but she cuts him off at the pass.

 

“Of course, Commander Dameron. I know, I—thank you, for— telling me. I know how important you were to her, Pae-Pae talked about you a lot, y'know, and I—I—”

 

Poe thinks she might continue, but she doesn't. He sinks to one knee, rests his hand gently on her back, considers giving her a hug but forgoes it when she shudders and begins to sob in earnest. She waves him away, flapping her hand at her face and murmuring that she's fine, that she's grateful he was there in Paige's last moments.

 

There, in the sense that he condemned the brave gunner to this death. There, in the sense that his ears are still ringing with Leia's words.

 

_Dead heroes. No Leaders._

 

Paige Tico was nothing, if not a hero. She was a leader, too, in her own way.

 

He backs out of the engine room after another awkward pat on Rose's shoulder, leaving the sister-less sister to her grief so that he may go partake of his own.

 

* * *

 

 

Paige had the most beautiful, full lips — unenhanced, simply genetics — and even without rouge, they were always the plummy color of the fruits that grew from his father's Koyo trees, back on his homeworld Yavin 4.

 

And they spouted the most colorful expletives at him, in the early days of their acquaintance. Oh, they'd rubbed each the wrong way back then. He'd thought her far too sheltered, having never seen anything outside of her mining colony on Hays Minor; she'd told him off more times than he could count over his brazen disregard for orders. Never mind that he was her commanding officer, never mind that she was several years his junior. Paige Tico never bit her tongue when she believed someone was doing the Wrong Thing.

 

 _They were both too bold back then_ , Poe thinks as he pulls from the bottle of contraband jet juice, _their unseasoned hearts too full of pride_.

 

Perhaps his still is. He wonders what Paige would say now, if she hadn't been the one to release and detonate those proton bombs over the _Fulminatrix_ — if her body weren't a fine ash orbiting the planet of D'Qar. Would she be furious with him, for losing so many? Proud of him, for leading the take-down of a massive _Mandator IV_ -class Dreadnought?

 

She'd given him a proper tongue lashing so many times over their years working together — _what're you thinking, you barvy hoochoo—honest to entropy, Dameron, you can't just storm in there with your rinky-dink X-Wing, you laserbrained nerfherder—don't you realize how kriffing stupid this plan is, you_ —

 

He can almost imagine what she'd say now, and it is no comfort to him.

 

He'd always found his eyes drawn back to that beautiful mouth of hers while she yelled at him, watching the way she'd shape each syllable of each word in Basic. She and Rose had sported a bit of an Otomak accent when they'd joined the Resistance, just the two of them and the clothes on their back and a united refusal to discuss whatever had become of their parents, their planet, their lives.

 

The accents faded with time; the fiery spirits of the Tico sisters never have.

 

 _He can still remember:_ Paige had been a gangly, underfed young woman, Rose a shy teenager holding her big sister's hand as they trailed through the rusting ferrocrete corridors of the underground base on D'Qar.

 

There had been something like joy on their smudged, tear-stained faces — wonder, almost, at the paltry outpost the Resistance called home. To Poe, it was just an old bunker. He'd lived there off and on for years by that time, after defecting to the Resistance from the New Republic's defense fleet.

 

To the Tico sisters, however, it had been liberation. Even after they'd lost everything in the bargain, everything but each other, they'd been ready — and happy — to join the fight.

 

Watching Paige give her awestruck sister an indulgent, watery smile, then wait patiently while Rose nosed around some broken down X-34 landspeeder down on the maintenance level, he'd vowed then and there that they'd have him, too, come what may.

 

So whenever Rose Tico reamed him out for some perceived miscarriage of justice or poorly executed maneuver, he just watched those beautiful lips, those fiery eyes, the way her long, elegant fingers curled and retracted as an extension of her pique.

 

She _had_ him, after all. Come what may.

 

* * *

 

It was the laughter, though, that really got him. After she'd been flying with the Resistance, what? One galactic year, maybe two? Long enough for Poe to know she was just as good a gunner as she was a pilot, long enough to know that sometimes she sneaked Rose aboard the _Cobalt Hammer_ when she thought the mission was safe enough and that no one would notice, long enough to know that she even let Rose fly from time to time and that Rose was a talented pilot in her own right—

 

Long enough to know that Paige hated the smell of Corellian seed poppers because they reminded her of the First Order officers who oversaw mining operations on Hays Minor, that she loved to partake whenever the Pamarthen pilots brought out their homeplanet's astringent wine even though it knocked her flat on her ass, loved letting Rose beat her over and over during their marathon games of Shronker because she knew it made her sister happy.

 

He even knew things she liked despite her never explicitly saying so, like when he slung his arm around her trim waist during the long walk from the hangar back to their quarters after a trying mission, leaning his tired head on her shoulder, or how he'd wink at her whenever he thought she was being too serious.

 

It's no secret that Poe is always quick with a joke; there is no level of tension he can't cut with a well-timed quip. It's part of what makes him an effective squadron leader, and a Commander — he isn't just daring, he isn't just a good pilot, he's _likable_. Poe knows this about himself.

 

But there aren't a lot of people who can make him laugh in turn, not after his mother's death. He'd been only eight years old, and already so sure that he would follow in her footsteps — that he'd be a great pilot, just like she was. He was so ready to make her proud. He's spent his entire adult life making do, just hoping she _would_ be proud, if she were here to tell him so. And maybe sometimes he goes too far — gets a little too daring, because he's thinking of his brave mother, and what she would've done. Hoping to live up to her memory. Maybe that happens. But Poe doesn't talk about that, not with anyone.

 

So humor is his defense mechanism, an easy shield he wields to cover up a vestigial longing for his first hero, Lietenant Shara Bey of the Alliance to Restore the Republic and the Yavin 4 Civilian Defense. So he uses it to ingratiate himself with his pilots, to quell any inter-squadron conflict, to rebuff any attempts at earnest intimacy from those closest to him.

 

It's not as though Poe doesn't have feelings. He's a good son — calls home to Yavin 4 to exchange short, perfunctory conversations with his father whenever he has time, loves BB-8 like the astromech is his own flesh and blood. He's a good soldier — when he's captured by the First Order, he doesn't give up the map with Skywalker's location, even after hours of brutal interrogation — not until Kylo Ren storms in and pulls it from his mind. _(Maybe he's also a bad soldier — he_ does _try to mutiny against Holdo, after all, but misguided as his every decision is that follows the attack on the_ Fulminatrix _, he can at least say that his heart is in the right place and also that his heart is completely fucked up. So there's that.)_ He's a good friend, too — takes Finn under his wing once he wakes from his induced recuperative coma, helps him and Rose pull off their harebrained scheme to dismantle the hyperspace tracker aboard the _Supremacy_. Believes in them, believes in the mission. Believes in the New Republic. Believes he's doing the right thing, most of the time. Can even admit when he's wrong, some of the time.

 

Still — not many people can make him laugh. But Paige could.

 

She was so serious, so damn sincere and focused most of the time. The first time she planted herself across the table from him in the canteen, about two years into her tenure as Cobalt Squadron gunner and pilot, he was halfheartedly playing with a bowl of gruel. She fixed him that intelligent, probing gaze of hers, and he'd been ready for a dressing down. He'd been sure he did something to piss her off. They hadn't usually sat together, hadn't fraternized at all, in fact.

 

 _He can still remember:_ her little sister, Rose, had saved his hide earlier that day. The First Order's Zeta Squadron had ambushed them and the _Raddus_ 's security protocol had locked all the doors, including all ingress points of the hangar, where Poe had been tweaking some features of _Black One_ 's communications system. As the _Raddus_ had prepared to jump, Poe had been left completely exposed, unable to enter the interior of the ship while the TIE fighters were laying siege to the vulnerable hangar bay. No one had been able to figure out how to bypass the protocol and get the fragging door open. No one, that is, but Rose, who had calmly pulled out the guts of the door's control panel, let a few sparks fly as she'd rewired the thing, and then smiled goofily at Poe when he stumbled inside, relieved, the lasers blasts of Zeta Squadron and BB-8 howling at his heels.

 

He'd felt lucky, of course, but also guilty for how easily he'd always dismissed Rose. She'd just saluted him, a bit sloppily, and leaned into Paige's embrace when the gunner threw an arm around her sister's shoulders, beaming down at her with pride.

 

So there he'd sat in the canteen, feeling like a heel, and there Paige had sat, watching him.

 

“You're not the first koochoo to underestimate my genius sister,” Paige said to him, voice low and confidential like she was cluing him in on a huge conspiracy. “Don't know why people do it, I think it's because she's so sweet. I tell her she's gotta be tougher, but you know—people are who they are.”

 

He grunted and nodded, non-committal, and Paige sighed.

 

“Why did Anakin Skywalker cross the road?” she asked.

 

“What?” he blustered, surprised by the non-sequitur. She just cocked her head at him, waiting.

 

He'd been startled, and let out a breathy chuff. “I have no idea.”

 

She waggled her eyebrows, the first silly gesture he'd ever seen her make. “To get to the dark side,” she murmured.

 

A smile pulled at his lips then. _He can still remember._

 

“An Ewok strolls into a bar and says to the bartender, _'I’ll have a whisky and. . .soda.'_ The bartender says, _'Sure thing—but why the little pause?'_ ”

 

Poe rolled his eyes, but didn't stop her.

 

Paige continued, smirking, “ _'Dunno,'_ says the Ewok. _'I’ve had them all my life.'_ ”

 

He'd huffed in amusement. “These are awful, Tico.”

 

“One more,” she crowed, “What did the Force ghost of Obi Wan Kenobi say to the bartender?”

 

“Oh, maker, I don't know, what?” he asked.

 

“' _Give me a beer and a mop.'_ ”

 

It hadn't been the stupid jokes that did it, that finally cracked through his self-recrimination. It was the gleeful way her dark eyes danced as she giggled — _giggling, Paige Tico, he never thought he'd see the day_ — and the way her cheeks dimpled when she gave him her rare smile, for the first time.

 

He'd laughed, loud and brash, and _he can still remember_ how it drew the stares of the other Resistance members loitering in the canteen.

 

Poe didn't mind that at all, especially when Paige's warm, slender hand had landed on his, and she'd squeezed his fingers tightly, as if she were grounding him.

 

_There were a lot of heroes on that mission._

 

* * *

 

 _He can still remember:_ the night she knocked on the door to his tiny bunk on D'Qar, and he'd opened to find a loose-limbed Paige slouching against the doorjamb, her breath reeking of acidic Pamarthen wine, her eyes glazed over.

 

“You gonna invite me in, flyboy?” she slurred, gesturing to her jumpsuit-clad body suggestively.

 

“ _Kriff_ , Tico, how much of that junk did you drink?” he asked, as he pulled her close and wrapped one of her slender arms around his shoulders. “Let's get you to your bed.”

 

“Hey, wait,” she whined.

 

He'd paused, one foot in the dank corridor and one still inside his quarters.

 

“Rose is still stationed on the _Raddus_ , and—normally we'd bunk in together, tonight.” She wasn't looking at him, her eyes sliding over the shadowy shapes of his bunk's utilitarian furnishings.

 

He waited, looking at her. He could feel the furrow forming in his brow, trying to understand.

 

“It's just—it was three years ago. On—back home. Our parents. I comm'ed her, she's handling it okay, but, I don't think—I'm not okay,” she muttered.

 

“I coulda guessed that, what with the jet fuel breath,” he retorted.

 

“Poe, I just need a warm body. And I like _your_ body. C'mon, be a pal.” She'd looked up at him through her dark, thick eyelashes, a pout playing across those lips. Paige's lips — maker, what else could he have said?

 

“Alright, Paige,” he whispered, guiding her into his quarters and closing the door.

 

It's not like anything happened, besides notoriously sharp-tongued Paige Tico curling her body into his like a needy, lonesome loth-cat. It had been strange but wonderful, and when she gently brushed her full lips across his own before burrowing her face into his scratchy regulation sleep-shirt and wrapping her long limbs around him, he'd thought maybe it wasn't just any warm body that she'd been looking for.

 

Maybe it was _him_ that she wanted.

 

* * *

It was casual, when they started sleeping together.

 

 _Just sex_ , they'd promised each other, to blow off steam between missions. Negotiations had been settled long before they'd ever laid a hand on each other. They were soldiers, after all. Pilots. _Leaders_.

 

Truthfully, Paige was too much of a hardass to put much stock in grand romance, despite all her high-minded ideas about heroes, and Poe was too busy commanding the Resistance's fleet to properly woo her.

 

But in the shadowy, quiet hours between D'Qar's dusk and dawn, during their off-shift hours on the _Raddus_ or whatever mission they were flying, they would hole up in one of their bunks with some jet juice or if they could get their hands on it, some emerald wine — just enjoying each other.

 

It wasn't _just_ sex. Poe knows this, because a lot of times, they'd spent the night playing Dueling Dice or Dantooine double-hand or watching old holovids on his ancient holoprojector.

 

Sometimes, they'd just talk. Paige would tell him about mining, how she hated the back-breaking work of it and the long, dark days spent deep under the surface of Hays Minor, about the exhaustion on her parents' wan faces when they returned home each night, about the heat and stink of Haysian smelt and how her father had forged the snowgrape leaf medallions she and Rose wore as a joint birthday gift when both girls were only infants. He'd tell her about the jungles of Yavin 4, about the thrill of sitting on his mother's lap in the cockpit of her A-Wing as they broke atmo and he flew out into the deep velvety blackness of space for the first time, of how empty he'd felt when she died, about how he'd channeled his anger at the New Republic and his distant father into his efforts for the Resistance.

 

It wasn't only deep, serious conversation. They'd gossip about who else was secretly shacking up among the squadrons, about whether the prodigal Han Solo would ever return to the fold, about the futures they idly imagined for their lives if the day ever came when the First Order was dismantled and the Resistance was no longer needed.

 

They didn't talk about how clear it was that that day would not occur in their lifetimes, regardless of how much time they had left. A pilot — especially one like Paige and Poe, who flew such dangerous missions so regularly — never talks about the inevitability of their death. It's no kind of way to live, and really, that's what the two of them were trying to do together: grab a little life for themselves, while they had the means and the time and the energy.

 

 _He can still remember:_ one time, Paige grabbed him by the hand and tugged him all the way to the Yard, where they smuggled _Black One_ out for a joyride right as the Ileenium sun was coming up through the forest, breaking a gentle dawn. Having her strapped into his lap while he steered his trusty X-Wing fighter through Gandder's spins and Tallon rolls, sinking down until they were practically flying through the towering evergreens then surging back up into the sky — giving her a turn, his breath stolen as she let the X-Wing nosedive within meters of some large arboreal lake before pulling out of the drop and smoothly steering them back up, up up—

 

Pilots in love, or something close to it. Even now Poe isn't quite sure if they were trying to impress or terrify one another, although he wonders if it's possible that the truth is the two emotions, when it came to Paige and him, were not mutually exclusive.

 

And when it _was_ about sex? It was _good_ sex. Hard, fast, passionate and sloppy — on every surface of his quarters or hers. Illicit, stolen moments — rocking against each other in the gunner pit of the _Cobalt Hammer_ or the cockpit of _Black One_. Her fingers creeping up his thigh when they sat side by side in the canteen, cupping him through his flightsuit. Grabbing her ass in passing on his way out of the command center, hoping no one was watching.

 

Gentle, reverent, slow — taking his time, making sure he studied every inch of her smooth, tan skin, tracing the lean lines of her legs. Putting his mouth on her cunt, even when she said he didn't need to if he didn't want to, because he loved the way she tasted, the way she'd say his name as she came all over his tongue. Tickling at that spot right under her ribs with his calloused fingers, just to hear the sober, serious Paige Tico collapse into hysterical giggles.

 

Feeling this strong woman go gentle and sweet in his arms, muttering filthy Huttese endearments in his ear when their bodies were tangled so tightly, their pleasure so inextricably wound together, that Poe forgot the day and the hour and where he was and the entire world outside of the bubble surrounding them.

 

It wasn't just sex, he wasn't just a warm body, and Paige Tico was not just a dead hero to him.

 

But she was a hero. If she'd never flown a day in her life, if she'd never left Hays Minor, she still would've been a hero.

 

It was like she said — people are who they are.

 

* * *

 

After their escape from Crait, he takes one of the few surviving Resistance lifeboats, a U-55 orbital loadlifter, and flies to Hays Minor. He wishes Rose could come with him, but she's still incapacitated from the wounds she's received during the battle, so he leaves her behind. He thinks about asking Finn, but his new friend is still trying to find his place in the Resistance, and besides, he spends most of his time nervously hovering around Rose's bedside.

 

 _Best leave them to it_ , he figures, hoping they can grab at a little happiness of their own.

 

He doesn't take much time for his detour, only two galactic days — he may have been demoted, but he's still Captain, after all.

 

Just enough time to fly to Hays Minor, touch down on the barren soil of the abandoned mining colony, and find a small, weathered house with two interlocking snowgrape leaves painted above the front door — the same one that dangled from Paige's neck, the same one that rests around Rose's now. Together they form an abstract, swirling portrait of a round celestial body — perhaps the Otomok system's lone star.

 

The door is unlocked; it swings open when he touches it. He lets himself inside, wanders from room to room like a befuddled specter. He's not sure what he's looking for — there are some remnants of a life hastily left behind by a scared, fleeing family, but he doesn't know what, if anything, might hold sentimental value to Rose. And what is still there inside the house looks as though it's been picked over a few times; there's nothing digital or mechanical or mineral or metallic. Everything that remains has no market value, has been deemed worthless by the scavengers that have come through since the Tico family left.

 

He comes upon a bedroom at the back of the house, obviously shared by two teenage girls. He rifles through the clothing — none of it would fit Rose now, but he still shoves a dress he's almost sure was Paige's into his satchel. A couple more items follow — a stuffed animal, some kind of Otomok canine he thinks, a dusty plasticlear vase bearing some long-dead flowers. He hesitates as he's leaving, then turns back to the two small pillows that sit at the top of either bed. He strips first one pillowcase, shoving it into his satchel, but when he reaches for the other one—

 

She's there, just the faintest hint of the smell he remembers from when he'd bury his face in her hair, their bodies moving as one in sinuous rhythm — something a bit floral with an undercurrent of smoke, like she was trying to erase the acrid smell of her homeworld.

 

Paige, the very last and only physical remnant of her, just a trace of a scent on an abandoned pillowcase in an abandoned house on an abandoned planet. Gone, gone, gone — and this is all he has of her.

 

It's too much, all at once and finally, finally, Poe lets himself _feel_.

 

If this is all that's left, then he will take the time to have this, so he curls up in her childhood bed, breathes deeply of the sheets and bawls until his chest aches like it's been cracked in two and his head begins to throb.

 

When he's completely drained, he sniffles, wipes his face and neck on her sheet, and strips the pillowcase, folding it carefully and placing it in the satchel next to its twin. He hopes Rose will be happy to have it, and he hopes that when he gives it to her, she won't comment on the salty residue his tears will most likely leave behind.

 

He takes one last look at the house where Paige Tico grew up before he makes his way back to his lifeboat. He salutes the building, because he cannot salute _her_ , because he cannot bury _her_ , because he knows he will not even be granted the time to properly mourn _her_. The fight carries on. He hopes this small gesture is enough, he knows he'll have to make do — and he thinks, he hopes, that Paige would understand.

 

_There was a hero on that mission._

**Author's Note:**

> I can't take credit for those terrible _Star Wars_ jokes, sadly. I found them [here](https://www.rd.com/funny-stuff/corny-star-wars-jokes/).


End file.
